Construction on a passenger rail extension to Fort Worth’s Medical District is set to start later this year, transit officials said Tuesday.
The groundbreaking for TEXRail’s 2.1 mile extension from downtown Fort Worth to the Near Southside area will occur in late 2026 although an exact date isn’t set yet, Trinity Metro president and CEO Rich Andreski told City Council members during a briefing.
The $167-plus project is now fully funded with additional money from the Regional Transportation Council, Andreski said. The new station — to be built on land donated by Baylor Scott & White Health — will be located on Mistletoe Drive east of Jerome Street near Baylor Scott & White All Saints Medical Center. Service would begin in 2029.
The Medical District station will make a big impact by providing access to 50,000 jobs in the area and improving regional healthcare access.
“We are transforming Trinity Metro into a modern, full-serve organization to support our growing city and to continue to drive economic development,” Andreski said. “Innovation is one of our core values at Trinity Metro in terms of thinking differently about how we deliver service every day.”
The agency has focused on enhancing customer experiences, improving reliability and safety while reinventing some bus services to reach people who may have not tried transit before, he said.
“We’re making substantial progress in that respect,” Andreski said.
Anette Landeros, Trinity Metro’s chief strategy officer, said the agency is working hard to elevate riders’ experience.
“The community has responded,” she said. “We’re thrilled to say that folks are starting to understand where transit goes. They understand how to weave it into their lives to their own benefit. They’re really embracing it in a new way.”
TEXRail, about seven years old, currently runs from the T&P Station to Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and continues to see “phenomenal” ridership gains by reaching new markets in northeast Tarrant County, Andreski said.
“Before TEXRail, we were more or less a city of Fort Worth-centered organization,” he said. “The success of TEXRail is not just about airport access. It’s really about everyday mobility. What I see as a daily rider are people using the service to reach shops in our downtown business district, but also using it for just about everyday purposes. We see weekend ridership as some of the strongest ridership days of the week.”
The extension project will help transform Trinity Metro and boost economic development at rail stations as the ridership gains are exceeding the expectations of agency officials. TEXRail had a 20% increase in ridership in February and 15% increase in March, compared to the same months in 2025.
So far this fiscal year, TEXRail has recorded more than 502,885 riders, up from 435,408 in the same period of fiscal 2025.
The success of TEXRail led the agency to consider building transit-oriented developments at rail stations with the recent hiring of Mike Brennan, the former Near Southside Inc. president, as the agency’s vice president of economic development in January.
Trinity Metro’s financial analysis shows TEXRail generates strong economic growth, driven by the service’s reliability and 30-minute all-day schedule, Andreski said.
“TEXRail is generating tremendous economic returns,” he said. “We see one in three riders using TEXRail or TRE (Trinity Railway Express) every year. That was an eye opener for us.”
About 4 in 5 residents would like to see more rail investments, Andreski said.
Andreski said he envisions the TEXRail line as having a potentially enormous impact — especially on higher education — if the line can be extended south down to the Chisholm Trail Parkway, where it could eventually deliver users to stations near Texas Christian University and Tarleton State University campus on the city’s far southwest side. Two sites — the University of Texas at Arlington’s downtown Fort Worth location and the new Texas A&M-Fort Worth — are within walking distance of the Fort Worth Central and T&P stations.
Trinity Metro’s analysis of the TEXRail Grapevine stop — a popular destination — shows that property values and sales tax revenue essentially doubled for businesses within walking distance of the rail station versus the citywide average.
“We have good data points that tell us that investing in rail is a very smart economic move,” Andreski said.
About $1 billion in development is in the pipeline in the newly dubbed Switchyard Innovation District, the former Downtown Innovation District, near the downtown campuses of Texas A&M Fort Worth and UTA.
“Our hope for this project and all of the investments we’re making is to catalyze high-quality economic development around our train stations,” Andreski said.
Transit-oriented developments, in which people live in homes or apartments near rail stations, tops the list of the priorities for Trinity Metro to lessen vehicular travel as the region booms, Landeros said.
“Fort Worth is rich in opportunity, and mobility can really be that bridge to bring all of the goals you all want to accomplish,” she told council members.
Trinity Metro launched a transit-oriented development study of TEXRail and downtown stations in March. North Central Texas Council of Governments and the city of Fort Worth are also proposing similar transit-related studies, Landeros said.
“This is a big topic of conversation across the region,” she said, citing partnerships with cities and entities.
The Stockyards, the Medical District and the Switchyard Innovation District provide the greatest opportunities for future transit-oriented developments, Landeros said.
TEXRail passenger trains stop at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport Terminal B Station on June 12, 2025. (Mary Abby Goss | Fort Worth Report) “Our hope is that in 10, 15 years from now, we’ll be standing before you, celebrating the successes and that folks will be really eager to live near these rail stations and that it will really change and enhance the opportunities people have to live near transit,” Landeros said.
Bus improvements also are underway or planned by Trinity Metro. Although five underused bus routes were eliminated, the agency recently extended Route 4 from Stop Six to the Cultural District.
The agency is working with the council of governments on Lancaster Avenue improvements to enhance mobility on Fort Worth’s east side.
An express bus service from southeast Fort Worth to the Alliance area is also under consideration to provide residents with greater access to jobs in that northern area, Landeros said.
Council member Michael Crain, who also serves on the Trinity Metro board of directors, said the agency’s plans are ambitious to address transit-dependent riders while wooing choice ridership.
“Thank you for being visionary,” he told Andreski and Landeros.
Eric E. Garcia is senior business reporter at the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at eric.garcia@fortworthreport.org.
Disclosure: Trinity Metro is a financial support of the Fort Worth Report. At the Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
